Chapter Text
"See you, Ivan! Till!" Mizi waves her free hand with the most radiant smile, her other hand holding on to Sua's, the afternoon's warm light giving her silhouette an ethereal glow.
"Thanks for today." Sua nods, before she raises a brow at Ivan then meets Till's eyes. Till looks down at his shoes that second. She definitely knows, by the way he can see the shadow of the couple's joined hands swing a little, as if it's a subtle reminder. "Take care on your way home."
"Have fun on your little date!" Ivan teases as he waves his other hand. The couple's smiles grow even brighter in their own Mizi-like and Sua-like ways. "And Mizi," he whisper-yells like there's any point to it when he, Sua, and the passersby maneuvering away from the irritating group of highschoolers standing still in the middle of a busy street, can hear him clearly, "Tell me all about it later." He winks. Mizi flushes. Sua looks away. Till suppresses the urge to roll his eyes.
"Of course!"
Till manages to smile, realizing he's been quiet since they stepped out of the restaurant. Just a little more. He can do this. He can act natural. "Yeah, take care. See you next Monday."
Mizi nods, with that usual smile of hers that never fails to accelerate his heart rate. He feels Ivan's hand on his shoulder and, like clockwork, he shrugs it away.
As they watch the two walk away, immediately lost in their own world, Till feels a certain, stinging pressure at the back of his eyes, on his nose. He sniffs and shuts his eyes. It's over.
On a warm summer afternoon after school, Till's unrequited love of twelve years officially announced her relationship with their childhood friend and, officially, unknowingly, finally breaks his heart.
Just as Till begins to walk away, making a mental note to stop by at a convenience store to get a whole gallon of ice cream and cry his heart out while decimating some randos on one of his FPS games, an arm hooks him by the neck, dragging him close to its owner. He jerks his head and looks up at Ivan in instant annoyance (he really isn't in the mood) (and, again, why the fuck is he taller than him?), coming face-to-face with a snaggle-toothed grin.
"Now you and I are going on a date of our own."
Till slumps in his seat with a groan, head on top of the couch's edge, staring at the karaoke room's ceiling illuminated by dim, colorful LED lights. "I have to give up on Mizi…," he sighs, voice slightly hoarse from singing half a set of songs without hydrating his throat in between.
"Hm. Did you really try in the first place?"
Ivan earns a well-deserved smack at the back of his head. The boy only laughs in response, rubbing his previous target soothingly, as if his head is already completely numb from this routine they've been doing for their decade-long reluctant friendship (How they even lasted that long is beyond Till; just look at this guy. Beneath that pretty face is a twisted personality!). "That's not how you comfort people, asshole."
Another laugh, the genuine kind where the snaggletooth is almost in full view. It's nothing like the polite chuckles or even the fake laughs he makes around people the guy won't exactly consider his friends. "Do you really have to give up?"
Till blinks. "I may be a pathetic, pining loser but I'm not a homewrecker. How can you even suggest that?" The audacity of this man; Sua is his cousin. Ivan will be one of the casualties in the very unlikely event that those two break up. The very thought of even getting in between them and causing Mizi any kind of grief makes him sick to his stomach.
"Ah, to think so little of me…," Ivan fakes a hurt expression, placing a hand over his chest. "Of course I'm not saying you should get in between them. Anyone with eyes knows those two have always been made for each other." A pause. "No offense." Till grumbles in response, sipping his drink, his entire face scrunched up. He's right, and Till has long been aware, but hearing it directly still stings a little. "And despite all that, you've loved her without asking for anything in return—weird of you, but—"
"'s not weird. You wouldn't understand…" Another grumble, and Till continues sipping his soda. The few times he'd tried to imagine actually dating Mizi, he'd either ended up flustering himself to death or getting smacked by a sense of shame because who does he think he is, imagining himself standing beside the most precious goddess and holding her hand? He couldn't even imagine himself being the recipient of the smile he finds the prettiest, the one that only appears whenever Sua is around. His love has always been bound to be one-sided.
What does this guy even know about liking someone one-sidedly, anyway? With how adept he is at using his charms and simply pretending, he'll probably only need a day to woo anyone who captures his interest.
"Mhm. I'd at least want them to look at me a lot," he replies wistfully, grinning in that specific way whenever he's up to no good—his dark eyes narrowed, brows raised, smile lopsided. Sure you do, you attention-seeking bastard. He looks away, not in the mood for any of this guy's mischief when they're supposed to be mourning his lost love, and takes a nacho piece, scooping a generous helping of cheese and beef before stuffing it in his mouth.
"The point is," Ivan continues as he picks up both the remote and the songbook, "you don't need to stop if you don't want to, especially if it's that important to you." An 'especially since you've always liked her' goes unsaid. It is a fact he knew the smart little Ivan had figured out during their childhood, much to his embarrassment (and Ivan's amusement, that gremlin). “Your feelings aren't worth any less. As long as you don't get in the way of her happiness, anyway."
"...I won't." Till huffs with his mouth full of nachos. He sips again and swallows. Junk food really does help mend a broken heart. "If Sua's her happiness, then…" He trails off. Ivan nods solemnly, already aware of what might be less painful when left unsaid, as he busies himself with the remote. Till really has no choice but to give them his blessing, even if they didn't really ask for it. He can only watch on and admire Mizi from afar, like he always has.
With how long he's liked her that it's simply second nature to him, he knows he can't let go of these feelings so easily either. Maybe he'll follow Ivan's advice…
Then he thinks about the two being more openly affectionate, more than their usual hugs and joined hands that still send a dull pang to his chest, and he feels like crying again. It will be a frequent reminder of how his first love has reached its ending, and he's just some loser who will be unable to move on. He covers his face once he feels that familiar warning sting again.
He can't cry here, even if they're the only people in this room. The person he's with is Ivan. He's never going to live this down!
Belatedly, he realizes that Ivan has already picked and entered a song on the karaoke machine, and a ballad is starting to play, likely taking Till's silence as him ending the conversation. A hand is on his shoulder, fingers tapping him rhythmically, almost reassuringly.
"I'm still here always," Ivan sings, the instrumental of the ballad drowning any other sound save for Ivan's voice. (He really had to be great at singing too, huh? God's really playing favorites.) "Paused at every moment / While missing you, by your side…"
He'll give himself this song. Till lets out a sniffle, his shoulders trembling slightly, and he can feel the palms pressed against his face grow wet. Ivan makes no indication of noticing, and continues singing and tapping his shoulder.
"Always in the same place by your side… here always…"
They stay like this for a minute or two. This is kind of Ivan, surprisingly. He is the guy he's bickered with the most, and yet he's truly the only one he can talk to (or who only understands, actually, because they're usually allergic to talking about their feelings when the girls aren't around) about his one-sided love. Despite their entire confusing history, Ivan is one of the few people he can rely on and trust the most.
He actually prefers this, as strange as receiving advice from and being comforted by Ivan of all people is, over his initial plan for the evening. But it goes without saying that this will be one of the things he'll never admit out loud.
"Should I call you 'the sparkling sea' / Or should I call you 'my world' . . . "
And then recognition slowly dawns on Till. He's heard this song before. It's from that Kdrama series Sua and Ivan were watching (and Till barely paid attention to) while they were waiting for Mizi to arrive at the former's house for a group project. It's the song playing during a dramatic, tearful encounter between the two main leads, where one of them is essentially trauma dumping.
This guy is literally singing some background music while he's crying his heart out, like this is simply a scene from those shows.
"Ivan, you fucking—"
Before he can stab his side with his elbow, uncaring whether his gross, gross tears and snot are still streaming from his face, Ivan is out of his seat and running away, cackling in between singing the lyrics, absolutely ruining the scene he'd set up.
"Cheer up, cheer up!”
It was love at first sight.
The new kid at school and the neighborhood, after all those long talks and being passed around by adults who didn't want to be saddled with the extra responsibility of taking care of a child (it ends with him left in the care of his uncle's family in Seoul), the younger Till often kept to himself and his little notebook of scribbles, not for his refusal to relate and mingle with his peers, but for how difficult the whole "making friends" thing has always been. His sharp, intense stare didn't help his case at all, serving as some sort of barrier that drew the other kids away.
Enter Mizi that sunny spring day. A child had braved that little barrier and cast a shadow over a doodle of a plane that's still being worked on, and when Till looked up to those golden eyes behind large, circular lenses, hair pinker than the cherry blossoms, and bright (pretty, pretty, pretty) smile, he'd thought he was seeing a nice fairy who would spirit him away and finally save him from his solitude.
The pretty spring fairy asked about his drawings, and, stumbling over his words, he talked about the ones that looked best and the little stories happening on his pages—the first time anyone ever showed genuine interest in his art—and he felt his heart soar whenever she clapped and praised him.
It turned out the fairy was actually a girl from his class, and she'd bestowed him the honor of playing with her. Who was Till to refuse?
And whoever knew Mizi would surely know Sua, a usually quiet and polite girl who always brightens whenever Mizi is around, like the moon who reflects light from her sun. The two were inseparable, and Till never really minded being the one to walk behind while on a sidewalk that only fit two people walking side by side, if it meant he could be Mizi's friend, too. Besides, the two were the kind to stop and wait if he ever needed to pause and retie his shoelaces, and while it was sometimes awkward whenever he and Sua were left alone, she still made sure to make him feel included.
Being the third wheel didn't last for long, (un)fortunately—Ivan completed their quartet when they entered grade school, a gradual event Till wasn't too happy about.
Ivan, in his memories, has always been one of the strangest, sometimes creepiest, kids he'd ever met.
Their first meeting involved him and Mizi being chased down by a fluffy, large ass dog and backed into a dead end. A hero who wants to protect his spring fairy, Till shielded Mizi from the dog, his arms outstretched, his knees shaking in fear. Mizi was clutching the hem of his sweater. As brave as he wanted to make himself seem, he's only seven years old. He still didn't want to die even if it's to defend his crush! He still has hopes and dreams!
Then he spotted a dark-haired boy around their age peeking at them from a corner, behind a wall.
"Help," he sobbed, "Call for help."
The boy merely blinked. And continued watching him now, specifically. Standing sort-of menacingly. Like one of those creepy children in that one horror movie his aunt should not be watching around children, except he's missing a twin. His expression didn't even change, even as the dog took one step closer to them and growled.
Maybe he's the grim reaper, he'd thought. No sane kid would just watch on while others are in danger! He was definitely going to die!
And then the dog dropped a rubber ball at their feet.
Mizi let go of him, bursting into tears. Till collapsed to the ground, the fear and relief making his knees buckle. The boy finally moved. "Sherlock," he called, and the dog happily waddled over, receiving pats on the head from the kid from The Grudge.
"Ivaaaaan!" Mizi wailed, leaving his side, and throwing her arms around the boy, her face filled with sweat and tears. "I was so scared! Why didn't you come sooner!"
"I didn’t need to. He doesn't bite." He put his entire fist inside the dog's mouth, the weirdo that he always has been, sending both Mizi and Till, a boy he barely knew, into a panic. The dog only kept its mouth open, wagging its tail. This was not its first rodeo. "See." He looked at Till with those dark, void eyes as if he's proud of his work.
Seven-year-old Till wouldn't have known then that the kid, who simply watched as he and Mizi helplessly bawled due to a misunderstood, harmless dog, is Sua's cousin their age and their future classmate. Or that Ivan would follow Sua around quietly by default, which meant that he would become Till’s partner on two-person sidewalks (though he had a feeling it was him Ivan was following around, which doesn't really make sense considering their shitty first meeting). Or that there was definitely something wrong with him, in a way that it so obviously amused him whenever he got a rise out of Till.
He wouldn't have, so for the first time in his life, Till went off on someone, walking up to his face and going on a loud, agitated tirade about helping people when they so obviously need it and maybe not fooling other kids into thinking they're going to die, "because that's just messed up, what the hell, man?!" that shocked his audience (Ivan, Mizi, and Sherlock) into silence.
And then he noticed the faint, red hue in his dark, black eyes, and a glint that he swore wasn't there before.
He's seeing that familiar glint in his eyes again roughly eleven years later, more than a month after that fateful, tearful afternoon, as Ivan takes a seat beside him, setting his lunch tray on the table. Ivan gives him a nudge. He responds with an idle hum.
He's come up with another excuse, hasn't he.
Through the buzzing chatter of their schoolmates in the bustling cafeteria, he hears the ever-so-cute sound of Mizi's laughter, catching his attention. Sua is showing her something on her phone and whispers in her ear. Till turns back to his plate and begins eating.
"You two!" Mizi begins, looking up at them with the same Sua-induced smile, "What were you up to yesterday? We missed you."
Till doesn't even need to look at Ivan for him to answer for them. It's the story he started creating, anyway. "We went over some concepts for the EP's cover," Ivan lies as naturally as he breathes. "I'm personally partial to the anemone crown. Till draws those really well…"
Like hell they did. They just played Overcooked while eating overpriced pizza in Ivan's room for two hours after studying, which mostly consisted of Till being possessed by the spirit of the still-alive Rordon Gamsey out of pure rage whenever Ivan didn't do his share of the virtual kitchen chores properly.
For the past month, Ivan has made it his mission to limit Till's exposure to the couple, coming up with multiple excuses to pull Till and himself, as perpetrator, away from the two and their honeymoon phase. As a result, he's been spending more time with Ivan alone than usual, from impromptu study sessions with just the two of them and detours on the way home to weekend plans that were only for “single bros, bro-time, no happy couples allowed. Instead, why not try this new ride at the amusement park? I got free tickets after that gig."
Or maybe he likes giving the two privacy as his way of congratulating them and bothering Till in the process; he can never truly tell what this guy is thinking.
Either way, while there is a sense of guilt tugging at him whenever he's reminded that he's essentially putting some distance between him and his childhood friends, he can't say he isn't thankful; with the limited exposure and Ivan's … Ivanisms serving as a distraction, the ache in his chest has begun to dull. It has become more manageable to accept the fact that Mizi will never see him the way he sees her as one of the absolute truths of his world, right next to the truth that he will likely always love Mizi in some shape or form.
Regardless, he needs to get his shit together soon. Mizi is slowly catching on, and Sua probably already did, with the way she sometimes raises a brow at Ivan and his bluffs—considering her forever reliable built-in Ivan Bullshit Detector—and just decided not to say anything. He's not going to ruin their last year of high school.
"Let me see! Are you going to be the one wearing the flower crown? Would it be like those ones we made before?"
Till swallows. There's nothing to see. "They're still a work in progress," he tries, avoiding Sua's gaze.
"And Till is under NDA," Ivan adds with a grin as he takes a spoonful of sundubu and begins blowing on it gently. There's no contract.
Mizi sighs with a small pout, wilting and leaning against a busily chewing Sua for support. "Then I better get the first signed copy, with a dedication solely for pretty Mizi~"
"That one's reserved for Till, though. The love of my life~"
"Wh—" Till whips his head to see Ivan winking at him. He rolls his eyes and then returns to his meal. "I don't need it." (But if he were to accidentally see it at a store and accidentally purchase a copy, he's not going to return it. Returning it even when there will be an online release he already would have rated five stars would be too much of a hassle.)
This is this other thing Ivan has been doing for the past month—trying to out-honeymoon phase Mizi and Sua one-sidedly as a bit, which started with him jokingly whining about feeling so, so bitterly single whenever he sees the two being cute (as if he'd have any trouble making anyone fall for him if he ever tried), before he turned to Till, with the all-too-familiar glint in those dark eyes, instantly giving him a sense of foreboding.
Sua lets out a snort. "Then it's Mizi's."
"No, sorry, Mizi. My first is reserved for Till."
"Yeah, I bet it is."
Ivan chokes on his breath and drinks his water to recover, instantly telling of what forsaken gutter the bastard's (and Sua's, judging by her small, satisfied smile) mind got into. Till stops chewing and gives the two a deadpan. Mizi lets out the most inelegant (yet cute) wheeze and buries her face into Sua's shoulder, her back trembling.
"...I mean,” Ivan says after a beat. Bitch.
Mizi makes a muffled screech.
"Make sure it's protected in, you know," Sua rips open the plastic wrapping of her straw and stabs it into her strawberry milk bottle, "plastic wrap."
Ivan clears his throat. "I think it'd be more secure if—"
"Hold it." Till glares at Ivan before the guy can dare get into what kind of material should be used for the album and nothing else, who doesn't at all look apologetic. He looks at Mizi, asking for help, to no avail. She's dying. Till points his chopsticks threateningly at the cousins, who just have to share a brainwave right in front of his lunch, crafted with the recipes of the aunties and uncles of ancient times. The audacity. The disrespect. "Cease."
Ivan sets down his chopsticks and raises his hands in surrender. Sua continues sipping from her straw, patting Mizi's arm rhythmically. Till would've found the scene sweet if not for the reason why Mizi's in that position.
"Anyway,” Till begins to change the topic, because the cousins definitely won't after the mess they happily made, and Mizi, the spring fairy corrupted by these heathens, is out of commission, “What are your plans for the winter recital?”
With Mizi enthusiastically beginning to explain how she and Sua are going to have a duet of a song they wrote and composed together ("My Clematis," Sua adds. “The title.”) (Of course they'll have a duet; what did Till expect.), their conversation goes on track to something more normal, and a sigh of relief escapes him. It's an older song Mizi had started composing before they got together, she explains, and Sua came up with the idea to complete it and perform it for their final performance as members of the music club. Mizi’s eyes are practically glimmering as she details their plans, her expression radiant.
Mizi truly looks the prettiest whenever she talks about something—or someone—she loves.
He's really bound to like her for a while longer, isn't he?
As the two half-talk to each other and half-explain to Ivan and Till their plans, he feels a finger poking his cheek. He side-eyes Ivan with a frown, just to find that up-to-no-good expression he'd expected to see absent from his face. Ivan tilts his head slightly, brows raised, asking a silent, familiar question Till normally interprets as “do you want to leave?” or “are you okay?”.
It's in moments like this where he's grateful for Ivan's usually unnerving perceptiveness.
He looks back at the pair, then at Ivan. He still likes it here, despite what happened recently; his home has always been—will always be—this little quartet. He shakes his head.